Summary
In this short lesson, Joe explains how love became dangerous somewhere in childhood, so that we now want it and push it away at the same time. Whatever grit came packaged with love growing up — criticism, abuse, guilt-tripping — got wired to love, and the way to spot your particular wiring is to listen to your negative self-talk. How you speak to yourself is how you were taught love works.
Joe lays out the three ways we push love away. We chase it (neediness that signals we don’t deserve it and aren’t loving ourselves). We avoid it (fearing we’ll lose ourselves, be dominated, or be smothered). Or we fight it (defending ourselves in a way the other person experiences as a battle). In each case we get compliance, rebellion, or distance — but not love.
Then comes the part where we fool ourselves into believing we actually want the love we’re repelling. We do it in one of two ways: we decide it’s just not the right person, or we blame — them or ourselves. Joe illustrates with a 35-year-old who’s only attracted to unavailable younger partners and calls it bad luck. The way out is to draw a boundary: to ask for love without the thing it was married to. Joe tells the story of calling his parents at twenty-something to say he’d only come over if they stopped criticizing him — terrifying at the time, because the only love he’d known came with criticism. After a year and a half of silence, they reconnected, and he learned love could exist without the grit. Once that’s known internally, there’s nothing left to push away, because love is finally safe.
Key Concepts
- Negative self-talk reveals how love was wired in childhood
- We push away love by chasing it, avoiding it, or fighting
- Chasing love signals that you don’t deserve it
- We fool ourselves by blaming the wrong person or circumstance
- Draw a boundary to get love without the thing it was married to
Key Quotes
“In our childhood, somewhere along the line, love became a little bit dangerous. And so at the same time that we want it, we’re also pushing it away.”
“Whatever way that we were wired to receive love, that’s the thing that we’re typically doing to block the love.”
“Chasing love basically sends a signal that you don’t deserve love. Why would you have to chase it?”
“There’s no sense in loving somebody who doesn’t love themselves.”
“I love you. I want your love, but I’m not willing to chase you for the love. I want your love, but I’m not willing to be dominated for your love.”
“It was one of the scariest things I’d ever done… but what I was doing is I was making a stand saying, I won’t accept love in this variety anymore.”
“As soon as we realize that we can have that… then the whole thing starts falling apart and we can see, oh, it’s just possible for us to be loved simply, easily, without all the drama.”
Transcript
in our childhood, somewhere along the line, what happened was love became a little bit dangerous. And so, at the same time that we want it, because it’s natural for all of us to want it, we’re also pushing it away. So, in this video, let’s talk about how that happens, and we’ll talk about the three ways in which we most likely push it away, like the main categories, and then at the end, we’ll talk about the way that we most likely fool ourselves around it, how we convince ourselves that we’re not pushing it away. What happens to us when we’re kids is that we want love. We experience some version of love that comes with some sort of grit in it. Maybe it’s criticism. I love my parents, my parents love me, but they’re constantly criticizing me. I love my parents, my parents love me, but they’re abusing me. And so, whatever it is that they do to me while loving me, or while I’m loving them, is what gets wired with love. So, whatever way that we were wired to receive love, that’s the thing that we’re typically doing to block the love. And the way you can find out exactly the way that you push love away, if it’s not obvious to you, is you just pay attention to the negative self-talk that you have in your head. How you speak to yourself to some degree is like the way that you were taught love was. So, if you’re constantly criticizing yourself in your head, then you know that’s what you were taught that love was, was criticism. If you’re abusing yourself, then that’s what you were taught. If you’re guilt-tripping yourself, that’s what you were taught love was. And if you really want to explore that self-talk, we go into that in the connection course, and we have a podcast on it. But for this conversation, what’s important to recognize is that something got married to love. So, let’s get into the three ways in which we push it away. The first way is that we chase it. So, chasing love pushes love away. So, if I get really needy with you, and I’m like, “Oh, would you like me? Would you I mean, I think you’re just the greatest thing ever to Like there’s something in us is just like, “Yuck, I don’t want that.” Right? I don’t want to take care of you. I don’t want to have a loving relationship with you that requires me to abandon myself to take care of you. And you get to see lots of ways in which this happens, right? It could be looking for praise. It could be this constant like looking for some sort of praise. It could be I need to spend time with you all the time or I don’t feel good if I don’t get time with you or I need your attention. It can be all sorts of different ways in which we are needy. And of course, we’re all needy on some level, right? But this is a a thing that happens all the time, right? It’s a perpetual state. And you’ll see in relationships often, I always ask people, “Okay, this is you, this is your partner. Are you like this or are you like this?” Right? And if you’re like if you’re this person right over here, it means oh, you’re chasing them. And chasing love basically sends a signal that you don’t deserve love. Why would you have to chase it? And you’re also sending the signal that you’re not loving yourself in that moment. And there’s this great line from Abandon says, “There’s no sense in loving somebody who doesn’t love themselves.” And so the and there’s something in us inherently that knows that, that knows that oh, if I’m love somebody who doesn’t love themselves, there’s going to be a lot of pain in it for me. Now, the other side of this coin is this person over here, right? Is the person who’s the avoidant of love. And that’s the second way in which we push away love is we avoid it. And so typically inside of the person who’s avoiding love, what they feel like is oh my god, if I let this in, everything’s going to like I’m going to lose control. It’s going to be I’m going to lose myself. I’m going to lose control. I’m going to every I’m going to open up a door. I’m going to open up Pandora’s Box. That’s the feeling inside of that. And there’s lots of ways in which this manifests, right? There’s the person who’s like, “Oh, I’ve been dominated and so every time somebody loves me, love comes with domination, so I’m I’m going to avoid.” There’s the person who’s like smothered. It’s like, “Oh, I’ve been smothered by my mom and so now if anytime you want to love me, I feel smothered, so I’m going to walk away from that or I feel obligation. I have to return your love.” And so there’s lots of ways in which this happens, but it’s that push push away like, “Oh, I’m going to avoid this experience.” So, that’s another way in which we’re constantly pushing away love. It’s like, “That person wants love. They they really do, even though they’re running away from it, they’re saying, ‘Oh, I really want love, but I’m so scared that I will lose myself in it, that I’ll be dominated in it. I have to I have to like resist your love or I’m going to go away. I’m going to dissolve.‘” And that typically comes from a childhood where that’s exactly what would happen is like they were loved to the point of you can’t even maintain your own identity. It has to be mom’s identity or dad’s identity. And so that’s where the avoiding thing comes from. And then the last one, the final way in which we push away love is we fight. We just go, we battle up and though internally it feels like we’re defending ourselves, right? I have to defend myself. I have to get what I want. I I can’t I can’t like buckle down, buckle into this other person. That’s how it feels is it’s defense, but the other person feels like it’s a fight. Like, “Okay, let’s go.” And so you see this in couples all the time where they’re just constantly fighting or you see this at work where there’s constantly a power struggle. You’ll see parents who are having power struggles with like eight-year-olds. I’ll give you a perfect example of this. I remember I was at my friend’s house and you might think like, “Oh, it’d be cool to be friends with Joe.” It is not always cool to be friends with Joe. And so I’m I’m hanging out on this guy’s farm and he’s having a bad parenting moment. We all have them. He’s having a bad parenting moment. And he’s having a power struggle with his his 8-year-old. And I’m like, “Dude, she’s eight. Like, your job is to never have a power struggle with your 8-year-old. Right? You’re telling her that that you’re not in control by having a power struggle, but what you’re really doing is you’re replicating that when you were a kid, love came with a fight. There was always a fight. How does that daughter grow up? The daughter grows up feeling like she was forced and pushed into stuff, and so she’s going to obviously rebel. Or she’s going to say, “Okay, whatever you say, Dad.” But it’s not going to be love. He’s not going to get love. He might get compliance. He might get rebellion, but he’s not going to get love. And that’s his way of even with his daughter wanting the love and pushing away the love at the same time. And so, that’s how we do it. We’re either avoiding it, we’re either chasing it, or we’re defending/fighting. Even say in the defense pattern where you’re fighting, what you’re fighting for is to be seen, to be loved. And you’re not getting seen, and you’re not getting loved. But you’re also pushing away the love. And so, there’s all sorts of ways in which we do it. You can find your particular way. You can look into your childhood to find a way. You can look into the voice in your head to find a way. But that’s basically what we’re doing, the way we’re pushing away what we want most. But now, here’s the weird part. The weird part is that we have a way of convincing ourselves that we are actually want the love and we’re not pushing it away. And we do this in one of two ways. The first way that we do it is that we convince ourselves that it’s just not the right person. There’s something wrong with the person. And the other way that we do it is we blame ourselves or somebody else. We say, they’ve done something or I’ve done something and therefore and those are the two ways. So, let me give you an example. So, I was just talking to a guy, I think it was yesterday. I’m talking to a guy and he is saying how he is 35 years old, hasn’t found the love of his life. And he’s but he said, I know that I can get it, you know, because I’ve had two relationships that have been really good. And so, I know that I can get it. So, I just think it’s about finding the right person. And I was like, okay, cool. So, what happened to those two people? And what we discovered was that the two people that he was dating were both significantly younger than him and were at a place in their life where there’s not really a capacity to commit, you know, in your early 20s. You’re not going to jump in very often and go, especially in his particular socioeconomic area where like people are just getting their careers started and they just graduated from college. It’s not a typical time for people to get married. And I’m like, okay, so how much are you actually just attracted to people who are unavailable? That you know on some level are unavailable. And then you have a good relationship, but you know it’s never going to actually pan out. And he’s like, oh, crap. I totally see how I’m doing that. And that’s where we convince oh, it’s it’s circumstances. It’s it’s somebody else. It’s it’s I haven’t found the right person yet. Right? But the other way that we do it is we blame. We say, okay, I blame you because I’ve been chasing your love and you haven’t given it to me or the way we more likely say it is, oh, I’ve been chasing you for your love and you just don’t open up. He doesn’t open up. How can I get the love I want? He doesn’t open up. I can’t get the love I want because they can’t they don’t stop hassling me. They’re constantly telling me how I have to be. I don’t get the love I want because they’re always fighting with me. I don’t get the love I want because they don’t see me. I don’t get the love I want because I I I yell. I scream or whatever. I I I’m avoidant. And so we’re just constantly blaming instead of actually just looking at the pattern like, “Oh, I can get the love I want without the thing it was married to as a kid. Oh, what is it like to actually draw that boundary? We have a great boundary episode if you want to look into boundaries more. How do I draw the boundary and say, “No, I want your love but I want it without the jealousy.” Like, I love you. I want your love but I’m not willing to chase you for the love. I love you. I want your love but I’m not willing to be dominated for your love. As a matter of fact, when I was a kid I wasn’t a kid, I was 20-something years old and I called up my parents and I was like, “Hey, I love you. I want to hang out. I want to be your son but every time I come over you just criticize me non-stop and nobody wants to be criticized. I don’t want to come over if I’m criticized. So, I’m happy to come over if you can stop criticizing me, right?” And I drew that boundary. Right? Like today I laugh at it because I’m like, of course I could draw that boundary but then it was like life-changing. It was it was the scariest thing one of the scariest things I’d ever done. But what I was doing is I was making a stand saying, “Hey, I won’t accept love in this variety anymore. I I will only have love that comes without criticism.” But the reason it was scary in me is because I was thinking I was saying, I I I might not ever get love again because the only love I knew was with criticism. And so my parents didn’t call me for almost a year and a half. They were just they were really upset and then eventually they called me up and they were like, “Okay, I we want to spend time with you.” I was like, “Great, I want to spend time with you, too.” they were much much much much better at not criticizing me. It slipped out every once in a while and I’d say like, “Hey.” And they’d be like, “Okay, sorry about And and and then in that process, I learnt, “Oh, I can have love without criticism.” And now, and once I did that, I don’t need to push love away as much anymore. Why do I need to push it away? Because it’s actually safe. And as soon as we realize that we can have that, as soon as the internal work has happened, where we can say, “Oh, I don’t need to dominate myself for love. I don’t need to chase myself for love.” I don’t need to to fight myself to get love. And I can do that externally. I can say that boundary out loud, like, “Hey, I love you. I want you, but I’m not willing to suffer this abuse for your love.” Then the whole thing starts falling apart and we can see, “Oh, it’s just possible for us to be loved simply, easily, without all the drama.” And we stop doing this and we just start doing this. And we find out that actually like it’s almost all love.